Smellobrate!

I have a new word for today.

"Smellobrate"

It's for use when something smells so good, you want to celebrate!

And now...on with some recent events.

My hours at work have been cut...again. I'd joke about it, but when it coincides with a troublesome roomie causing more trouble, it's not really funny-time.

Basically, said roomie has decided to move out at the end of next month. I'd jump for joy (because I hate him with the burning passion of a 1000 suns) if it weren't for the fact that it hoses me, and my remaining roomies, out of around $225 a month. Money I don't really have at the moment, given the work hours being cut.

So in-short, Hulk mad. Hulk really mad. But it's better than what we thought was going to happen, where the rest of us could've been stuck in a lease, and forced to waste $2000 over the course of the next 9 months. OR suffer a breach of contract, and potentially be sued for even more.

Been taking a break from Andromeda. About this time last week, she pulled a relationship no-no, and judged me. She called me "petty". I was venting about the workplace issues, and roommate issues (as seen above)...to which she judged.

Personally, I don't think it's petty to be mad at someone who screws me over to make their situation better. I think it's justified. Apparently, Andromeda thinks otherwise. And after some intermittent fighting, I've decided to simply not deal with her for the time being.

In her absence, I've been ruminating over alot of the problems I've been having with her. Namely, the fact that she's an emotional hostage-taker. One of her texts to me during our arguing phase is textbook emotional hostage-taking.

And I quote:

"If you loved me like you say you do, you'd..."

Funny thing is, It wasn't until then that I realized that she does it often. In fact, she did it right from the get-go, dropping the L-bomb ("I love you"), very early in our relationship, which made me uncomfortable. Over time, I eventually caved and reciprocated it back to her, mainly because she got pissy when I didn't. Still, that part is partially my fault, as I did acquiesce. And now, I suspect that there's going to be some fun conversation time come Sunday, when I tell her that our relationship isn't working out for me.

Now that'll be a chucklefest...

Ass-backwards...

Funny story. At work today, I found myself with a constant wedgie. One that I had to pick roughly every few minutes.

After a few hours, I quickly groped around and discovered that somehow, I had put on my underpants on backwards.

Seriously.

To put this into perspective...I don't dress in the dark, so I can't even use that as an excuse. I've been pretty out of it the last few days, though. Haven't been sleeping well, and I think I might be coming down with something too.

Also, it was my birthday on the 17th, so I'm now basking in my own decreptitude at the ripe old age of 34.

I did manage to grab Star Wars: The Clone Wars, season 2, and watched all of it over the course of this last week. Still a pretty good show.

I've also started collecting a board(-ish) game called Heroscape. It's basically a dumbed-down, tabletop RPG game with pre-painted miniatures. I've probably spent $400 buying figures and expansions for it. Bad news is, apparently the owners of it, Wizards of the Coast (current owners of the Dungeons & Dragons RPG) dropped it back in November, leaving the game without a distributor. So now everything is essentially out-of-print. What that means is...without any continuing production, prices for existing/remaining content in shops will go through the roof and the rarer stuff that I don't have will become even more expensive.

Case-in-point...A small jungle expansion with 4 spider miniatures, a smattering of tiles, and a copse of trees was going for $200+ on E-bay. That's about 5X what the set was originally worth.

But not to worry. I think I'm going to break out some arty skills and custom-make my own tiles, trees, and whatever-the-Hell else I want.

SHAZAM!

Busy, busy bee...

Blergh, been so busy lately. Double-blergh because I have a migraine. Thankfuly the pain, dizzyness, hurling, and lack of coordination have all but worn off. I'm even braving food for the first time in a couple days. Yay me!

It's funny how I ignore my poor blog, rob it of alot of the stuff going on in my days, yet when something comes along and kicks my ass...that's when I finally set aside some time for it. I've got to stop doing that. Maybe that'll be my belated New Years resolution.

Recent events:
I've been spending alot of time with Andromeda, and finally got my lightsaber (it's pretty sweet). If I can figure out how to post a picture of it, I'll try. Damned new-fangled interwebs!

Also gotten a few new addictions.

Being a Star Wars fan I tend to keep tabs on various Star Warsy things. I've been on the fence regarding the recent Clone Wars CGI animated series. I won't get too far into it, I'm fairly sure I've ranted in a previous entry why my fandom of Star Wars isn't synonymous with fandom of George Lucas.

Anyhoo, I finally caved and picked up the 1st season. And I have to say that I'm impressed. The first few episodes are kind of "meh", but after the first 4-5 episodes the show really starts to find its legs. We get to see some pretty mature concepts get explored. In an odd way, I think the show reminds me of the old Batman: the Animated Series, which found an amazing capacity for being able to entertain children, and adults, AND fans of the source material in 1 fell swoop. Now I'm chomping at the bit to grab season 2.

*slaps veins in arm*

JUST PUT IT IN MY VEIN!!

Erm. Yeah...

My other recent addiction is the new DC Universe Online MMO. While not perfect by any means (alot needs revisioning, if not a total overhaul), but the game itself is ridiculously fun, and feels more like a console button-masher (which it is, ported from PS3 to PC). Overall it's a very dumbed-down MMO, with pretty great voice acting, bringing back alot of established actors who have provided voices from various cartoon series.

Blergh, Up for an hour, now I'm exhausted. Back to bed for me...

Second verse, same as the first...

I've been contemplating what I should post for a few days now.

I was going to do the typical thing and do a New Years post, as many bloggers often do. And as New Year's approached, I felt little urge to post anything at all. I had an idea, and it sort of slipped away on me.

It made me think what's there to post?

What's the saying? "If you've got nothing nice to say, don't say anything at all"?

And I found myself with nothing good to say. Major buzzkill, I know.

Maybe it's the absence of Andromeda. Maybe it's the overall lack of direction I constantly feel. Maybe even the Winter blahs. I just don't understand what there is to celebrate. Yippee, it's another new year.

Another year has come and gone. Much like the previous year, and the year before that. It all just feels...interminable. And I'm not really sure what I can possibly do about it.

There just seems no satisfaction in anything. No challenge. Nothing really worth fighting for. In fact, that's exactly how I feel...I feel like a knight without a cause. A soldier without a proper war. Completely lost in a world I can't relate to.

And with all likelyhood, this new year will probably pan out exactly like the last.

I'll blink and miss it. And wonder what the Hell just happened.

I really need to change this pattern. I can't keep distracting myself from all the problems I have. Can't keep playing the shell game against my own psyche.

Now....go!

Trivial Pursuit(s)

Grrr. I bought Call of Duty: Black Ops the other day, and have enjoyed playing the single-player part of it.

Maybe I should place that "Grrr" somewhere else, 'cause that's not the grrr-worthy part.

The single-player is great. The game looks good, runs and looks great, and has a well-told story with actual actors lending their voices to it. The grrr-ing part comes in with the multiplayer.

I can't play it.

I'm not sure WHY I can't play it, but every time I try, I crash into the blue screen of death.

I'm running a fresh install of Windows 7 Ultimate, have all the updates, updated drivers, and for whatever reason, I play for a few minutes, then crash out. I then spent several hours looking for fixes to the problem (none of which apply to me), and resigned myself to the fact that I'll probably have to wait until the bozos that made the game, patch it so that it works.

Not wanting to pitch my basically new 'puter out the 22nd-floor window, I've been entertaining myself by just surfing blogs.

And came upon this one.

You Will Not Believe

Seriously. Star Wars yoga. I can't be in a bad mood after seeing that.
<:P

Things that make you go "SPLOINK!"

Wow, has it really been over a month since my last entry?

Yikes. I'm slipping in my old age.

I have been busy though.

Busyness checklist:

#1: Spending time with Andromeda. Things are going well, 'nuff said. Though Andromeda is heading out to Africa on the 20th.

#2: Up until recently, working lots. Hours have been cut, but for the moment, that's okay.

#3: Nursing my MMO-addiction. I'm STILL enjoying my Star Trek Online and Age of Conan. I would like to make a note that I joke by saying I have an "MMO addiction". I'm not playing them so much that I forget to sleep, eat, shower, or do other things. I'm still haunted by the stories of Chinese and Korean parents neglecting their infant-aged children, and having them die while they go play World of Warcraft at the local internet cafe down the street.

*shudders*

#4: Getting ready for Christmas. I HATE Christmas, and when I have my way, I don't celebrate it. But being as I've almost always been around family, or room-mates, I seem to always get hornswoggled into it. This year, I decided that if I'm going to participate, I'm going to go a bit overboard. And I did so by spending at least $100 on everyone. The irony being that I was flush with money during the shopping, then my hours at work got cut a week later. Go figure.

*closes checklist*

My lightsaber is almost done, I've seen some swanky pictures of it in its semi-finished glory. 'Saberlicious!

I've also had some peculiar thoughts, lately.

The other day I was listening to some Duran Duran on my iPod. Inspiration struck me for a new superhero. "The Reflex"!! Maybe when DC Universe Online comes out, I'll make him. A dual gun-wielding, corporate-sponsored, reality-show hero, with superhuman reflexes that change how he perceives time. I had to explain myself at work, the other day, as to why I was going: "na-na-na-na...na-na-na-na" to myself.

Hint: I was thinking about the song, and my superhero.

I've also contemplated an idea for an ultra-violent video game spoof called "Hater". It would be about ordinary people (a different one for each level), who encounter something they hate. It would tap into the kinds of things that most people find to be extreme annoyances, like telemarketers, or Jehovah's Witnesses canvassing your neighborhood. Maybe even those annoying people with the giant trucks with the dingle-balls attached to the trailer hitch (could be a driving level).

When encountering these things, the characters morph from mainstream reality, into their own personal reality, where they're constantly attacked by wave-after-wave of whatever particular annoying thing that irritates them. And the boss of the level would be an even bigger, badder version of it.

Within this fantasy world, they can creatively use practically anything as weapons. Guns (with no reloading), but other things like weed-whackers, lawn-mowers, or other unusual items could be used to dispatch enemies. "Ridiculosity" would be the theme, and while gory, the violence would also be cartoony.

Andromeda threw her 2 cents in by asking: "what would happen when you just keep shooting an enemy until they're hamburger?"

I figured that maybe the game could go the extra mile and you could scoop up the hamburger, make spaghetti sauce, eat spaghetti, and then watch the X-ray view of it going through your system, continuing to torture the annoying enemies' soul until you poop it out. Could be a mini-game there...

Hrm. It kind of reminds me of that Robot Chicken skit involving trying to kill a werewolf...and NOT using silver.

Addendummy (yes, I'm punning)

MMMmm, pun-licious.

In my last post, I mentioned that Andromeda and I had broken up. Things have progressed since then.

After a number of discussions, with both my friends, and her. I decided to give her the 2nd chance she asked for...much to my friends' chagrin. They raised good points, but at the end of the day I felt that I needed to be true to myself (I'm an above-averagely good person), and give her the shot at redemption, even if it causes me problems later.

In any case, for the moment, things are on the way to being patched up. We might go see the movie Megamind on Thursday.

I've been in a Star Warsy mood these last few weeks. Partially from playing Star Wars: the Force Unleashed II, which has led to watching the classic trilogy, the lame prequel trilogy, and generally reading alot of stuff online about Star Wars.

Being a bit of a geek, I have a penchant for taking things that interest me, and find ways of connecting with them. When I was young, I built models, played with licenced toys, etc. And off-and-on, I've considered taking that to the next level. I've contemplated building things like custom replicas. Blasters, lightsabers, starship models...that sort of thing.

I just recently found out that there's a man here, in my city, that does extremely elaborate, functional custom lightsaber work. And for this last week, I've been working on a design with him. The lightsaber he puts together for me with rumble, hum, respond to movement (swinging, striking), activate/de-activate, and will have deflection, clashing, and a bunch of other randomly generated sounds. Oh, and of course, it will light up, and flash-on-clash.

I think, though, given the price quote he gave me ($865, including blade and recharger), I might try and build my own the next time around. I've been looking at the individual bits and bobs, and if I knew a bit about electronics, I could probably build my own for half that.

But we'll see...